"You know I never tell tales."
That day, however, Opal was unexpectedly overtaken by Nemesis. Miss Fanny was suffering from a severe headache, and Miss Pollard came to take the arithmetic class in her stead. The girls told her the number of the exercise they had reached, and she wrote the questions upon the blackboard. For some reason of her own she reversed their order. When she called for the answers, Opal, with great assurance, read hers out, and, of course, as she had copied from the book, No. 6 came instead of No. 1, and vice versa. Miss Pollard stared at her in much amazement, and told her to come and work them upon the blackboard, a process of which she made a conspicuous bungle. Miss Pollard made no special remark, but possibly her suspicions may have been aroused, for she carried away the Key, and it was never again left in the classroom. Whether her affection for Opal prevented her from making a closer inquiry, or whether the affair was merely a coincidence, and she still preserved her faith in the integrity of her pet pupil, it was impossible to tell.
"All the same I call it the limit for her to shut her eyes to things in the way she does," commented Mavis to Merle. "Both Miss Pollard and Miss Fanny are dears, but a teacher ought to know something of what goes on in a school, and not leave it just to luck. What are we to do? We can't go sneaking and telling, and yet I feel we ought to make a stand. It doesn't seem right to let Opal behave like this and do nothing. She hasn't the slightest idea of honour."
"That's what most of them need here," snorted straightforward Merle.
"I know. But what can you expect with such a slacker as head girl? If only Mother were here I'd ask her, but I'm so stupid at explaining properly in a letter it's no use to write."
"Not a bit. She wouldn't really understand. Seems to me there's nothing for it but just to worry on as best we can. They're a queer set, but we can't help it."
CHAPTER X
Among the Boarders
Mavis and Merle, being day girls at The Moorings, have occupied so much of our attention that we have somewhat neglected the boarders. In their own estimation, however, they were a very important part of the community. There were twelve of them altogether, and though, during classes, they mixed with the rest of the school, they were rather proud of the fact that, as far as possible, they "kept themselves to themselves". They had all sorts of little secrets that day girls might not share, signs and passwords and mysterious references, which gave them great satisfaction, and were calculated to provoke envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness in the breasts of those who did not understand the allusions, and whom they sternly refused to initiate.
Many of the boarders were the children of parents who were out in India. Some of them had been born there, and could remember burning skies and temples and native bazaars and elephants, and many other un-English things. Mamie and Jessie Drew could even speak Hindustani, a language which all the Indian-born children had talked in their infancy, though most of them had forgotten it in a very short time after landing in Britain. With the exception of Iva Westwood, Nesta Pitman, and Aubrey Simpson, the boarders were all juniors, and an uncommonly lively little crew, who sometimes led their seniors a dance, and were capable of a considerable amount of ragging among themselves.